NO THREAT TO WIN AN EMMY AWARD

At 11:30 a.m. Friday, televisions clicked on in classrooms throughout Quince Orchard High School, and peering solemnly from behind a makeshift anchor desk, two people unfamiliar to most Washington-area viewers began their midday newscast.

This was "News Till Noon," a production of the Montgomery County public schools.

The anchors were Brian Porter, the school system's new director of public information, and Thelma Monk, principal of Poolesville Elementary. The broadcast, prerecorded in one of the Montgomery school's television studios, was produced by Joseph S. Villani, an associate superintendent. And the audience was the school system's entire 450-member administrative staff, who had attended a morning-long conference on changes in families.

The newscast was meant as a bridge between the serious tone of the conference and an afternoon picnic at Smokey Glen Farm. But it seemed to draw more groans than giggles.

It featured a food review. "What's for lunch at Smokey Glen?" Porter asked co-anchor Monk. "I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to know," she replied.

And it featured a sportscast. "The sports world is riveted, I mean riveted, on MCPS," said Bill Kyle, a physical education coordinator, who gave a preview of the picnic games. "We have horseshoes . . . . We have ballgames. We even have a TV set up so you can watch some old board meetings.

"Here's one {Superintendent} Harry Pitt taught me," Kyle said, as he tried to juggle but quickly dropped the balls.

There was even a weatherman, Darlene Merry, who began her forecast by wriggling out of a red plastic raincoat and matching hat. "It is going to be light today and dark tonight," said the forecaster, who, in another life, is assistant principal at Montgomery Village Intermediate School.

Amy GoldsteinAmy Goldstein is The Washington Post’s national health-care policy writer. During her 30 years at The Post, her stories have taken her from homeless shelters to Air Force One, often focused on the intersection of politics and public policy. She is the author of the book "Janesville: An American Story." Follow